"The relations between Christians and Muslims have never been cloudless."

The Patriarch of Moscow and All-Russia Kirill gave a Christmas interview to Dmitriy Kiselev, which was broadcast on Rossiya 1 TV channel, Lragir reports.

According to Oxu.Az, Patriarch Kirill spoke about the situation in the Middle East and Christian-Muslim relations.

He said Christians of Syria, Iraq and other places were caught in a very complex state.

"The relations between Christians and Muslims have never been cloudless, there were cases of forceful Islamization, conquer of Christian lands, but, if we do not consider the military actions, which were also accompanied by losses from this or that party, the Islamic world has never witnessed anything similar to the ongoing developments," the patriarch said.

He cited the Ottoman empire as an example.

"Let's take, for example, the Ottoman empire, Christian minorities were not terminated there," he said.

SourceWhy Should We Armenians Want Zionists to “Recognize” Us?
January 4, 2016
By Markar Melkonian

"Even today I am willing to volunteer to do the dirty work for Israel, to kill as many Arabs as necessary, to deport them, to expel and burn them, to have everyone hate us, to pull the rug from underneath the feet of the Diaspora Jews, so that they will be forced to run to us crying. Even if it means blowing up one or two synagogues here and there, I don't care. And I don't mind if after the job is done you put me in front of a Nuremberg Trial and then jail me for life. Hang me if you want, as a war criminal..."

These are the words of Ariel Sharon, from an interview published in the Israeli daily Davar, 17 December 1982.

At the time he made these remarks he was the Minister of Defense of Israel. In that capacity, he presided over the slaughter of 17,000 civilians in Lebanon, among them Armenians, as well as the massacre of thousands of unarmed civilians, many of them women and children, in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps just outside of Beirut. Sixteen years later, he would be elected Prime Minister of Israel. On 18 April 2002, U.S. President George Bush praised Sharon as “a man of peace.”

The present Prime Minister of Israel, Benyamin Netanyahu, is widely considered to be more of a “hard-liner” than Sharon. Under his leadership, the Zionist military has: subjected the densely populated Gaza Strip to incessant bombardment at the cost of thousands of civilian lives; subjected millions of people who have been under military occupation for more than half a century to collective punishment; and lied American taxpayers into a trillion-dollar war in Iraq that has so far resulted in well over one million deaths, and turned the lives of tens of millions of children into a living hell.

Thoughtful people might pause to consider what kind of a country would elect monsters like Netanyahu, Sharon, and Menachem Begin to their highest office.

In addition to serving as Prime Minister, Netanyahu also serves as a member of the Zionist legislature, the Knesset. It is under these circumstances that a delegation from Armenia's National Assembly paid a visit to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv on December 12 to 14. The purpose of the delegation’s visit, we were told, was to urge members of the Knesset to “recognize” the Armenian Genocide. The Armenian delegation announced that Israel and Armenia, together with “the international community,” must “continue their struggle to prevent crimes against humanity.”

For informed and decent people in “the international community,” the overriding message that this visit conveyed was the cretinism and hypocrisy of Armenian officialdom.

Armenia and Israel: Not Much in Common:

The National Assembly delegation’s advertised humanitarian aim in Tel Aviv is worse than garbled. Here are several of the ways that this is so:

--For one thing, Israel has never SURVIVED genocide, for the simple reason that Israelis have never UNDERGONE genocide. Jewish people, of course, were subject to a horrendous, genocidal campaign of annihilation perpetrated by the German fascists. We bow our heads to honor the victims of the Holocaust, and the tens of millions of Russians and other victims, too. We must never forget them, and we must guard against those who would trivialize Hitler’s crimes.

But most Jews are not Israelis, and more than 60% of Israeli Jews, including the Mizrahim, trace their ancestry back generations to lands thousands of miles distant from the European theatre of WWII. In any case, the lesson holds for Israelis as it does for Armenians and everyone else: it is indecent to rationalize ethnic cleansing by pointing to past victimhood.

For people who are not steeped in Chosen People mythology, racial arguments for the “right of return” to any land should be no more convincing than religious arguments. The relevant principle (in Palestine and in Mountainous Karabagh, too) should be SELF-DETERMINATION, not genetics or religious arguments. But even if we were to accept the Zionists’ own racial suppositions, they still lose the argument: molecular geneticists report that Palestinians have as much claim to be genetic descendants of the ancient Israelites as do Israeli Jews.

--For another thing, the Republic of Armenia and Israel are two very different polities: Israel is a colonial settler state, and Armenia is not. Like the Afrikaners of South Africa, Israelis are a modern nation of settlers and descendants of settlers who founded a garrison state.

By concocting far-fetched parallels between Armenia and Israel, the small and diminishing number of Armenian Friends of Israel lend a helping hand to Turkish nationalists who propagate the lie that Armenians are interlopers, with nothing but a mythological connection to the land of Armenia. This is strikingly similar to Zionist mythology, which depicts Palestinians as recent interlopers in the Land of Israel. The truth is that Armenians--unlike most Israeli Jews, but very much like Palestinians--are not a PRODUCT of foreign colonial domination; rather, they have ENDURED foreign colonial domination.

--Israel is a garrison-state, and Armenia is not. An imperial power lavishly subsidizes Israel as a remote-control device, to control the resources, markets, and populations of a strategically crucial region. American taxpayers subsidize luxury housing for foreign settlers on stolen Palestinian land. Israelis receive billions of dollars of U.S. aid annually, as well as credits, tax-deductible contributions, technology transfers, the protection of the Sixth Fleet, and unqualified diplomatic cover from the United States of America. (See, for example, Shirl McArthur, “A Conservative Estimate of Total U.S. Direct Aid to Israel: More Than $130 Billion,”WRMEA, Oct./Nov. 2013.)

All of this by way of ensuring American imperialist domination of oil, the Suez canal and vast capital markets, hemming in Russia and Iran, and propping up local clients, notably the House of Saud, the Egyptian army, and corrupt regimes in the Gulf. Recognizing this, U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig described Israel as “the largest American aircraft carrier in the world.” When the Zionist garrison ceases to fulfill this function, it will cease to exist.

Israel’s Crimes against Humanity:

As for the pretended aim to “continue their struggle to prevent crimes against humanity,”let us acknowledge the obvious: the Zionist regime is itself responsible for crimes against humanity, and these crimes are not limited to Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria. Tel Aviv has supported far-flung tyrannies, wars, and death squads, from Taiwan to Zaire, and from Nicaragua to Namibia and apartheid South Africa.

Indeed, the Israeli military has armed and supported perpetrators of genocide. In the1980s, when even the Congress of the United States of America refused to provide arms to the blood-soaked Rios Montt regime in Guatemala, Israel stepped in to arm the Guatemalan military and the death squads. Up to 200,000 Guatemalans were killed by the death squads and the Guatemalan military, including tens of thousands under Rios Montt, and (as the Catholic Church and the United Nations have documented) tens of thousands of others have been raped and tortured.

The Mayan people of Guatemala have committed no crime against Armenians. Why then should Armenian delegates fawn over those who helped to murder them? And in the name of “preventing crimes against humanity,” no less! If the National Assembly delegates were genuinely concerned about preventing crimes against humanity, they would have stayed home and condemned the Zionist regime.

And of course, we may add nuclear blackmail to the long list of unprosecuted Zionist crimes against humanity. They have never signed a nonproliferation treaty, and they have never permitted international inspection of their nuclear facilities. In collaboration with their strategic partners and ideological twins in apartheid South Africa, the Zionists developed and tested nuclear weapons, and since then they have produced hundreds of nuclear warheads which they have deployed on bombers, missiles, and Dolphin II-class “Doomsday Submarines.” Yerevan might well be located within one of their blast zones.

Fawning over Our Enemies:

Zionists have time and again distinguished themselves as enemies of the Armenian nation. The decades of active denial of the Armenian genocide is the LEAST of their offenses. We know about the decades-long strategic alliance between Tel Aviv and Ankara, and the ongoing military aid and intelligence that Tel Aviv has provided to the Republic of Azerbaijan. There is much more to say about this, but no room here. Instead, let us note several lesser-known considerations:

--Zionist collaboration with Turkish ethnic cleansers goes back to the earliest days of the modern Zionist movement: according to an entry in the diary of Theodore Herzl (an entry dated August 30, 1899), for example, the founder of modern Zionism intervened “to muffle the Armenian business” in the European press, in the wake of the massacres of the 1890’s. (For more about the relationship between the early Zionists and the Ottoman Sublime Port, refer to Marwan R. Buheiry, “Theodor Herzl and the Armenian Question,” in Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Autumn, 1977); Yair Auron, The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide (2003).)

--Zionist occupation has destroyed the ancient Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem. For more than sixteen centuries, the Armenian community in Jerusalem managed to survive invasions, crusades, and colonial domination, but seventy years of Zionist occupation, confiscation, and oppression has all but eliminated our ancient presence in the Holy Land. One hundred years ago, the Armenian community of Jerusalem consisted of perhaps 20,000 members. After the occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, those numbers have dwindled, until today the community consists of only several hundred members.

The Armenians of Palestine do not want to be under Zionist occupation. Yasser Arafat, the late Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, was expressing a widespread wish among Armenians in Palestine when, at the 2000 Camp David Summit, he rejected an American proposal to put the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem under Zionist authority. “My name is not Yasser Arafat,” he said, “It is Yasser Arafatian.”"I will not betray my Armenian brothers."

--Zionist occupiers treat Palestinian Armenians with the same contempt that they treat other Palestinians. Settlers regularly insult Armenians, desecrate religious sites, physically attack the clergy, and spit on priests.

On occasion they have done much worse. The siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem from April 2 to May 10, 2002 is just one of many outrages against besieged Christians in Palestine.

For thirty-nine days, the Zionist army laid siege to one of the holiest sites of Christianity, under the pretext of searching for “suspected Palestinian militants.”(All of this, aside from the fact that even if these “suspected militants” were in fact militants, they were entirely within their rights, under international law and the Geneva convention, to resist occupation of their land by a foreign invader.) During the siege, Israeli Army snipers killed seven persons seeking refuge inside the church; on April 4, they shot the bellringer of the Church, and on April 10, they shot an Armenian monk in the church.

--Over the decades, Tel Aviv’s warmongers, operating with the impunity of superpower protection, have destroyed homes and lives and depopulated Armenian neighborhoods in Lebanon and Syria. They have fomented civil wars that have gutted Armenian communities, and they set the stage for wars in Iraq and Syria that have annihilated ancient Christian communities in these countries.

Our “Clever” Fools:

One might think that moral and legal arguments (for what little they may otherwise be worth) should be paramount when it comes to making a case for genocide recognition. If so, then such considerations should stand on their own, without getting mixed up with considerations of diplomatic advantage. But of course there are practical considerations, too. And these, too, demonstrate the foolishness of the Armenian delegation’s errand.

The Zionists and their masters in Washington have set in motion wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria—wars that have already claimed as many lives as the Armenian genocide. They and their surrogates have created millions of refugees and turned the lives of tens of millions of children into a living hell. They have successfully fomented murderous Wahhabi hatred of Shiite Muslims, and over the past several years we have witnessed them step-by-step setting the stage for the emergence of Daesh.

And now, having succeeded in their strategic aim to destroy every Arab army that was able and willing to defend its territory against their aggression, they now turn their attention to Iran. The Zionists and their neocon confederates in Washington want war with Iran. And so do their strategic allies in Ankara.

No wonder, then, that year after year, opinion polls have confirmed that Israel is one of the most hated countries on Earth. In Latin America, Russia, India, and China, large majorities of respondents to recent public opinion polls express “negative views” of Israel. Europeans, on the whole, dislike Zionism and Zionists, and over years the antipathy has only increased. Even in the super-tolerant Scandinavian countries there is widespread disgust with their impunity and duplicity. Indeed, even in the thoroughly indoctrinated United States of America, one third of the respondents to recent public opinion polls have expressed a “negative view” of Israel.

In the course of committing one atrocity after another over the course of decades, Zionist leaders have been poisoning the well for future generations of Israelis. America will not remain the sole undisputed superpower forever. Unfortunately, it appears more and more likely that when the American empire wanes, Israelis will follow the Pieds-noirs of Algeria onto ships and airplanes and into oblivion. People who care about Armenia most assuredly should not take inspiration from the brutal--and ultimately doomed--Zionist project.

The Armenian delegates met with members of the Knesset, in their official capacity as functionaries of the Zionist garrison state. To portray this visit as “non-political” is dishonest and naïve. Their errand is absurd on the face of it: to beg functionaries of a brutal, genocidal regime to “recognize” a genocide! What is it that these unelected delegates think they are doing? Do they think they’re being modern and clever? What message exactly do they think they are sending?

The Armenian delegates have sullied the reputation of the Armenian nation and brought a disgraceful end to a year that might otherwise have had a redeeming significance. The last thing decent Armenians want is for the legislature of a brutal garrison state to “recognize” the Armenian genocide. The National Assembly Committee has wasted the resources of an underfunded state to jeopardize the good will of our most helpful allies, neighbors, and trading partners.

There are some Armenians who care more about the welfare and dignity of our nation than jumping through hoops for the entertainment of a distant imperialist power. It is time these Armenians raise their voices, to demand that the Republic of Armenia abide by the international cultural boycott of the Zionist regime.

Markar Melkonian is a philosophy instructor and an author. His books include Richard Rorty’s Politics: Liberalism at the End of the American Century (1999), Marxism: A Post-Cold War Primer (Westview Press, 1996), and My Brother’s Road (2005).

According to ancient tradition, Noah’s Ark rested on Mount Ararat in the Armenian mountain range. Armenia’s coat of arms has Mount Ararat with Noah’s Ark on top.

Armenian historian Movses Khorenatsi (410-490 A.D.) recounted the tradition that Noah’s son Japheth had a descendant named Hayk who shot an arrow in a battle near Lake Van c.2,500 B.C., killing Nimrod, builder of the Tower of Babel who was the first powerful tyrant of the ancient world. Hayk is the origin of “Hayastan,” the Armenian name for Armenia.

Ancient Armenians may have had some relations with the Hittites and Hurrians, who inhabited that area known as Anatolia in the 2nd millenium B.C.

Armenia’s major city of Yerevan, founded in 782 B.C. in the shadow of Mount Ararat, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.

Armenia was mentioned in the book of Isaiah (37:38), when King Sennacherib of Assyria invaded Judah around 701 B.C. King Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah prayed and Judah was spared. Sennacherib returned to Assyria: “And it came to pass, as Sennacherib was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons smote him with the sword; and they escaped into the land of Armenia.”

Armenia was mentioned in 520 B.C. by Darius the Great of Persia. Under Armenia’s King Tigrane the Great, 95-55 B.C., Armenia’s borders reached their greatest extent, reaching from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, successfully pushing back the armies of the Parthians, Seleucids and the Roman republic.

Armenia was the first nation in the world to officially adopt Christianity as its state religion when King Tiridates III converted around 301 B.C. Armenia’s thousands of years of history include independence interspersed by occupations of Greeks, Romans, Persians, Byzantines, Mongols, Arabs, Ottoman Turks and Russians. Armenia’s medieval capitol of Ani was called “the city of a 1,001 churches,” with a population of 200,000, rivaling Constantinople, Baghdad and Damascus.

In 1064, Sultan Alp Arslan and Muslim Turks invaded and destroyed the city of Ani. Arab historian Sibt ibn al-Jawzi recorded: “The army entered the city, massacred its inhabitants, pillaged and burned it, leaving it in ruins. … Dead bodies were so many that they blocked the streets; one could not go anywhere without stepping over them. And the number of prisoners was not less than 50,000 souls. … I was determined to enter city and see the destruction with my own eyes. I tried to find a street in which I would not have to walk over the corpses; but that was impossible.”

Muslim Turks made conquered Christians, Jewish, and non-Muslim populations into second-class citizens called “dhimmi” and required them to ransom their lives once a year by paying an exorbitant “jizyah” tax.

Sultan Murat I (1359-1389) began the practice of “devshirme” – taking boys from the conquered Armenian and Greek families. These innocent boys were systematically traumatized and indoctrinated into becoming ferocious Muslim warriors called “Janissaries,” similar to Egypt’s “Mamluk” slave soldiers. Janissaries were forced to call the Sultan their father and were forbidden to marry, giving rise to depraved practices and the abhorrent pederasty of the Turks. For centuries Turks conquered throughout the Mediterranean, Middle East, Eastern Europe, Spain and North Africa, carrying tens of thousands into slavery.

Beginning in the early 1800s, the Turkish Ottoman Empire began to decline. Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania won their independence. When Armenia’s sentiments leaned toward independence, Sultan Abdul Hamid put an end to it by massacring 100,000 from 1894-1896.

President Grover Cleveland told Congress, Dec. 2, 1895: “Occurrences in Turkey have continued to excite concern. … Massacres of Christians in Armenia and the development … of a spirit of fanatic hostility to Christian influences … have lately shocked civilization.”

President Grover Cleveland told Congress, Dec. 7, 1896: “Disturbed condition in Asiatic Turkey … rage of mad bigotry and cruel fanaticism … wanton destruction of homes and the bloody butchery of men, women, and children, made martyrs to their profession of Christian faith. … Outbreaks of blind fury which lead to murder and pillage in Turkey occur suddenly and without notice. … It seems hardly possible that the earnest demand of good people throughout the Christian world for its corrective treatment will remain unanswered.”

President William McKinley told Congress, Dec. 5, 1898: “The … envoy of the United States to … Turkey … is … charged to press for a just settlement of our claims … of the destruction of the property of American missionaries resident in that country during the Armenian troubles of 1895.”

President Theodore Roosevelt described to Congress, Dec. 6, 1904: “… systematic and long-extended cruelty and oppression … of which the Armenians have been the victims, and which have won for them the indignant pity of the civilized world.”

When Sultan Abdul Hamid II was deposed in 1908, there was a brief euphoria, with citizens naively hoping that Turkey would have a constitutional government. The government was taken over by the “Young Turks,” led by three leaders or “pashas”: Mehmed Talaat Pasha, Ismail Enver Pasha and Ahmed Djemal Pasha. They appeared as if they were planning to enact democratic reforms while they were clandestinely implementing a genocidal plan to rid the land of all who were not Muslims Turks.

The first step involved recruiting unsuspecting Armenian young men into the military. Next they made them “non-combatant” soldiers and took away their weapons. Finally, they marched them into the woods and deserts where they were ambushed and massacred. With the Armenian young men gone, Armenian cities and villages were defenseless. Nearly 2 million old men, women and children were marched into the desert, thrown off cliffs or burnt alive. Entire Armenian communities were deported to the deserts of Syria and Mesopotamia where hundreds of thousands were killed or starved to death. Armenian cities of Kharpert, Van and Ani were leveled. Russia came to Armenia’s aid until Russia was overturned by Lenin’s Bolshevik revolution.

Theodore Roosevelt wrote in “Fear God and Take Your Own Part” (1916): “Armenians, who for some centuries have sedulously avoided militarism and war … are so suffering precisely and exactly because they have been pacifists whereas their neighbors, the Turks, have … been … militarists. … During the last year and a half … Armenians have been subjected to wrongs far greater than any that have been committed since the close of the Napoleonic Wars. … Fearful atrocities. … Serbia is at this moment passing under the harrow of torture and mortal anguish. …”

Theodore Roosevelt continued: “Armenians have been butchered under circumstances of murder and torture and rape that would have appealed to an old-time Apache Indian. … Wholesale slaughter of the Armenians. … The crowning outrage has been committed by the Turks on the Armenians. … I trust that all Americans worthy of the name feel their deepest indignation and keenest sympathy aroused by the dreadful Armenian atrocities.”

Historian Arnold Toynbee wrote: “The Turks draft the criminals from their prisons into the Gendarmeri to exterminate the Armenian race. … In 1913 the Turkish Army was engaged in exterminating the Albanians … Greeks and Slavs left in the territory. … The same campaign of extermination has been waged against the Nestorian Christians on the Persian frontier. … In Syria there is a reign of terror. …”

Toynbee continued: “Turkish rule … is … slaughtering or driving from their homes, the Christian population. … Only a third of the two million Armenians in Turkey have survived, and that at the price of apostatizing to Islam or else of leaving all they had and fleeing across the frontier. …”

Armenia’s pleas at the Paris Peace Conference led Democrat President Wilson in a failed effort to make Armenia a U.S. protectorate. Woodrow Wilson, who was born Dec. 28, 1856, addressed Congress, May 24, 1920: “The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations has established the truth of the reported massacres and other atrocities from which the Armenian people have suffered. … deplorable conditions of insecurity, starvation, and misery now prevalent in Armenia. … Sympathy for Armenia among our people has sprung from untainted consciences, pure Christian faith and an earnest desire to see Christian people everywhere succored in their time of suffering.”

On Aug. 29, 2014, the California Senate unanimously passed the Armenian Genocide Education Act mandating that among the human rights subjects covered in public schools, instruction shall be made of the genocide committed in Armenia at the beginning of the 20th century.

Conference Organized By Avim And Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Titled “Projections For The Future Of The Turkish-Armenian Relations
17.12.2015

On December 16, 2015, Center for Eurasian Studies (AVIM) and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung held a conference in AVIM Conference Room titled “Projections for the Future of the Turkish-Armenian Relations”.

Opening speeches of the conference were delivered by Head of Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Office in Turkey, Dr. Colin Dürkop and Director of AVIM, Ret. Ambassador Alev Kiliç.

In the first panel titled “Future of the Turkish-Armenian Bilateral Relations”, which was moderated by Richard Giragosyan (Director of the Regional Studies Center), Prof. Dr. Kemal Çiçek (Dean of the College Of Humanities at Ipek University), Styopa Safaryan (Head of the Research Programs of the Armenian Institute of International and Security Affairs), Dr. Aybars Görgülü (Project Manager at Public Politics and Democracy Studies (PODEM)), Ruben Mehrabyan (Associate Fellow at the Armenian Institute of International and Security Affairs; Editor of the First Armenian News and Analyses) and AVIM Specialist Mehmet Oguzhan Tulun delivered their presentations.

The second panel titled “Future of the Turkish-Armenian Relations in the Context of Regional Developments” was moderated by Honorary President of AVIM, Ret. Ambassador Ömer Engin Lütem. The speakers in the second panel were Richard Giragosian (Director of the Regional Studies Center), Assist. Prof. Dr. Serdar Palabiyik (Department of International Relations, TOBB University of Economics and Technology), Dr. Alexander Iskandaryan (Director of the Caucasus Institute), AVIM Specialist Dr. Turgut Kerem Tuncel and AVIM Senior Specialist Aslan Yavuz Sir.

In the final panel moderated by Director of AVIM, Ret. Ambassador Alev Kiliç, a general evaluation of the discussions in the first two panels was made with the contributions of the speakers and participants.

Falsifications Using Hitler’s Name
By Emre Kongar of Cumhuriyet Daily, December 24, 2015

Among the sections I have added to the new edition of my book, titled “ Facing Our History - Tarihimizle Yüzlesmek -, there is one that has echoed the most which is the one about the falsification of our history using Hitler’s name.

My dear reader Mr. Sükrü Server Aya gives valuable information in his letter which may be summarized as follows.

The statement claimed to have been made by Hitler, before Germany’s attack on Poland receives full respect in the U.S. Congress as if it is completely honest and true; “ We will gain lands which we will be able live on with this occupation. Who, after all, remembers the Armenians ? ”

This statement which is carved on stone, is in display in the Genocide Museum in Washington, DC, was accepted for display in the museum with a promise of donation.

The following is the real crux of the matter.

After the Nuremberg Court started ( for the trial of the leaders of Germany during Hitlers time ) after his death, the London Times printed a news item on its 24th of November 1945 edition, with a title “ The Way to War of Nazi Germany “ .

There is no name of the writer or correspondent of the article and according to it, before Germany entered the war, Hitler, had made the above statement among others, on 22nd August 1939.

The document containing this statement was submitted to the Nuremberg Court after the registration onto the Court Records as a line item L-3, was later removed from the Court Records in accordance with the Court Rule # 10 which applies to documents not of original copy or found untrustworthy.

The document in question was typed on a plain paper with a bad German language. The letter ß in the German keyboard was typed as ss ( because the typewriter used was not a German typewriter).

The original of this document may be viewed on the website www.cwporter.com/gl3.htm .

Carlos Porter, himself a professional translator, who found the original document in the German archives, announced that it was not written by a person who had a good German language capability and that it was not written on a typewriter with German keyboard.

The paper used for this document is of ordinary quality, there is scratches on its back face, and the document itself contains such exaggerated statements like Goering, while drunk, dances on the dinner table in front of Hitler and other German generals.

( More detailed information can be found in Sükrü Server Aya’s book, Soykirim Tacirleri ve Gerçekler - Genocide Merchants and the Realities ).

Let me warn my readers :

Messrs. Kalkandere and Aya’s internet addresses have been hacked in different ways and therefore it may not be possible to reach them at times. However, it is possible to reach the documents when key words and names are entered in Google.

When the facts given by the esteemed researcher Mr. Aya are combined together with the information provided by Mr. Kalkandelen, it appears obvious that Hitler had not made that statement.

It is readily seen that the label “ falsified document “ which has recently been circulated and used in our media only in recent times was already in use internationally in wide range after the II. World War.Where Do Armenia And Armenians Go Wrong
Alev KILIÇ, Director of AVIM

Recent history of Anatolia, heartland of Turkey, bears witness to human tragedies. The era preceding and succeeding the First World War was a period of disintegration, collapse, and partitioning of the Ottoman Empire. The aim was to displace the Turkish people from the Balkans, where in many regions they constituted the majority of the population, as well as from western Anatolia, to the East, to land locked interior of Anatolia. It would not be justifiable to assess this observation as one of pessimism, cynicism, as one sided, biased, or subjective. History has provided Turkish people with a unique opportunity, with no room for ambiguity or means of denial, to see and fathom how the Allied Powers of the time aimed to shape the future of Turkey, with a written document, worked out consciously and through negotiations among themselves. This document, casting lasting bearings to a whole nation, was the Treaty of Sévres, designated to be enforced on Turkey following the First World War. This imposition, which aroused the indignation of the people, leading to a national struggle of life or death, was successfully scrapped away, to establish the foundations of the Republic of Turkey with the Treaty of Peace of Lausanne.

More than 5 million civilian Turks perished as they were killed mercilessly in the period from the rebellion in the peninsula of Peloponnese, the Ottoman-Russian war of 1877-1878, the Balkan wars of 1912-1913 to the First World War that set the stage for Armenian insurgency and collusion with the enemy forces as the Ottoman forces waged a war on five diverse fronts. The number of Turkish-Muslim civilian losses during 1914-1918 in eastern Anatolia alone, perpetrated by Armenians or Armenian involved foreign forces, with full records in the Turkish archives, surpass 500.000. The number of Turks forcefully displaced during this era, predominantly from the Balkans and the Caucasus is a multiplication of the above cited figures. Neither the Turk in the street in specific, nor the Turkish people in general have not forgotten the enormity of this humanitarian crime that Turkish people were subjected to in those years of turmoil. It is, however, one thing not to forget and a different thing to scratch history, to galvanize feelings of vengeance, or to carry forward one-sided historical grievances or unsettled accounts into present.

The Turkish people chose to bury past tragedies to memory, opened a new chapter with the establishment of the Republic, selected the path to make a new beginning to build the future, resolved to raise the country -devastated from decades of war, impoverished economy, destructed infrastructure, perished generations and elites- to the contemporary level of civilization. This titanic undertaking and resolve, starting almost from ground zero and requiring much sacrifice has paid off, making Turkey eligible for membership to the group of world’s largest economies, the G-20, where Turkey assumed the rotating chair for the year 2015 and also hosted the summit meeting.

On the other hand, in the period when the country was inward looking and focused on national unity and economic development, Turkey was late in recognizing that historical prejudices were re-surfacing in a haunting manner. At present, it can be observed that the unity and stability of the Republic is facing political calculations with a view to hindering her to assume a more powerful regional position and say. At the same time, the regional position of Turkey is apt to transform in the evolving global geopolitical shift. What we are witnessing today is the emergence of a new concept of Eurasia, a continuous interaction from the Pacific to the Atlantic where Turkey is moving from being an easternmost extension or outpost of the West to the center of Eurasia. It is thus acquiring a new role -together with the Balkans, the Caucasus, Iran, and Central Asian republics- of forming the center piece and nexus of the East and the West.

This enviable path of development of the Republic and people of Turkey has not been free of interventions and endeavors of erecting hurdles in the way to divert their energy and focus on this successful march. One of these are Armenian allegations and claims. Following a period of silence and reality of historical facts, some extremist, radical or militant groups in the Armenian diaspora started demonizing Turks and Turkey, conjuring allegations of genocide and related claims. What started as a marginal, fringe group voice succeeded in spreading in the wider community, eventually getting international attention through years of violent terrorism carried out in a number of countries by those Armenian groups. As the phenomenon of terrorism has become a serious threat for the international community at present, its root causes under study and investigation, it would be of relevance to bring to attention how Armenian terrorism started, was tolerated, and terrorists became hailed as heroes.

Concluding this background introduction, I now come to the title of this article, where Armenia and Armenians go wrong: The miseries and tragedies suffered by the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire is acknowledged in Turkey. They are neither denied nor minimized. The Armenians of eastern Anatolia were subjected to forced resettlement in the southern territories of the Empire in 1915. It is estimated, upon reliable historical evidence that up to 300,000 lost their lives due to diseases, deprivation, geographic-climatic conditions as well as harassment of local bandits. By citing this number, the intention is not to play a numbers game. 300,000 is already an enormous number. Every single life is precious and every single life lost deserves to be honored with blessing and condolence.

However, what needs to be recalled here, underlining the wrong that is being done, is the historical fact that during the same period, at the same geography, in excess of 500,000 Turks-Muslims perished under similar conditions. To close the eye to the tragedies of such a big number, to develop a narrative as if it were only the Armenians who were victimized, to single out the Turks as the perpetrators serve only to provoke the Turkish people to deep indignation. Scratching historical past in this biased and revengeful manner revives the tragic memories of the Turkish people, brings out the suppressed pain of their losses and in turn, opens the door for feelings of counter revanchism. No people’s respect and pain for their losses is less than others. The silence of the Turkish people for their losses should not be interpreted as one of indifference, but rather as one of realism and moral high ground. Efforts and attempts to reverse this understanding is bound to bring about more enmity and revengefulness in place of confining historical facts of the past to scholarly research.
Armenia and the Armenian diaspora are in need of reassessing whose interests the continuing campaign against Turkey and the Turkish people serve as well as who bears the brunt of this campaign. Today, the realistic and humanitarian gesture of Turkey, stating readiness to share mutual tragedies and bereavement, is to be understood and the extended hand to be held. The rational way forward for both peoples for a win-win solution is to start working on means for establishing bilateral and regional cooperation.

On the eve of the New Year, as we leave behind the year of 2015 where there were great expectations on part of Armenians, which turned out to be unrealistic, even wrong, our New Year’s wish and resolution for 2016 is to have rational and conciliatory understanding to guide us to the future.

1 comments:

COMMENT FOR MELKONIAN;Armenians have to apologize from the Jews. Do you know why Mr. Melkonian ?Let me tell you the reason: Even, Armenophil Christopher J. Walker admits that the Armenians helped Nazi forces to exterminate the Jewish people. You should have known the Armenian Legion in the Nazi Army ( 22.000 men, 4.800 of them under General (butcher) Drastamad Kanayan) or the great service to Hitler in rounding up Jews and sending them to death camps.

Post a Comment

Would You Please Update/Correct Any Of The 3500+ Posts by Leaving Your Comments Here - - - Your Opinion Matters To Us - - -

We Promise To Publish Them Even If We May Not Share The Same View

Mind You,You Wouldn't Be Allowed Such Freedom In Most Of The Other Sites At All.

You understand that the site content express the author's views, not necessarily those of the site. You also agree that you will not post any material which is false, hateful, threatening, invasive of a person’s privacy, or in violation of any law.

Please read the post then write a comment in English by referring to the specific points in the post and do preview your comment for proper grammar /spelling.

You need a Google Account (such as Gmail) to publish your comments.

Publishing Your Comments Here:Please type your comment in plain text only (NO Formatting) in an editor like notepad first,Then copy and paste the final/corrected version into the comment box here as Google/Blogger may not allow re-editing/correcting once entered in some cases.And click publish.-If you need to correct the one you have already sent, please enter "New Comment" as we keep the latest version and delete the older version as default